YEREVAN: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has called on Azerbaijan to begin consultations on signing a peace treaty, a text of which the arch-foe Caucasus neighbors agreed upon last week.
\nBaku and Yerevan fought two wars for control of Azerbaijan\u2019s Armenian-populated region of Karabakh, at the end of the Soviet Union and again in 2020, before Azerbaijan seized the entire area in a 24-hour offensive in September 2023.
\nBoth countries have repeatedly said a comprehensive peace deal to end their long-standing conflict is within reach, but previous talks had failed to reach consensus on a draft agreement.
\nOn Friday, the two countries said they had wrapped up talks on resolving the conflict, with both sides agreeing on the text of a possible treaty.
\n\u201cThe draft of Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement has been agreed upon and awaits signing,\u201d Pashinyan said Thursday in an English post on Telegram.
\n\u201cI propose Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to begin joint consultations on the signing of the agreed draft peace agreement.\u201d
\nThe deal to normalize ties would be a major breakthrough in a region where Russia, the European Union, the United States and Turkiye all jostle for influence.
\nBaku has made clear its expectations that Armenia remove from its constitution a reference to its 1991 declaration of independence, which asserts territorial claims over Karabakh.
\nAny constitutional amendment would require a national referendum that could further delay the treaty\u2019s finalization.
\nPashinyan has recognized Baku\u2019s sovereignty over Karabakh after three decades of Armenian separatist rule, a move seen as a crucial first step toward a normalization of relations.
\nArmenia also last year returned to Azerbaijan four border villages it had seized decades earlier.
\nNearly all ethnic Armenians \u2014 more than 100,000 people \u2014 fled Karabakh after its takeover by Baku.
\nWashington, Brussels and European leaders such as France\u2019s President Emmanuel Macron have welcomed the breakthrough. They have all tried to play a mediating role at various times in the conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
YEREVAN: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has called on Azerbaijan to begin consultations on signing a peace treaty, a text of which the arch-foe Caucasus neighbors agreed upon last week. Baku and Yerevan fought two wars for control of Azerbaijan\u2019s Armenian-populated region of Karabakh, at the end of the Soviet Union and again in 2020, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78768,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78752\/revisions\/78768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}